William Bridgeford, Lowell SunLowell, Mass., Supt. Chris Scott, a finalist to head the Cleveland school district, meets with high school students while touring the culinary arts program at Lowell High School.

Editor's note: The Cleveland school board, interim CEO Peter Raskind and Mayor Frank Jackson will interview the three finalists vying to become the district's chief executive officer on May 31. The board hopes to announce its choice shortly after that. This is the second of three profiles of the finalists.

Supt. Chris Scott is friendly with theteachers unionin Lowell, Mass.

She's hanging her hat on that relationship, whether it wins her the job as the chief executive officer of the Cleveland school district or blows her chances.

Scott, the superintendent of the Lowell district since 2008, has the strong backing of the Lowell local of the American Federation of Teachers. Her job application notes that she learned of the Cleveland opening through the national head of the AFT. Her r sum lists multiple articles in AFT publications that feature her collaboration with the union.

Scott, 45, sees cooperation with the teachers union as her strength. Building a strong relationship with the teachers was her goal from the start in Lowell, so that everyone in the district could work as a team to improve the education of students.

"I'm very cognizant of the fact that it's almost politically not correct to get along with teachers unions," said Scott. But she called that idea a reflection of "the sad state of political discourse" today.

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She said that if you're in the business of educating children, it's counterproductive to declare war against the individuals providing that education.

"If you want to declare war, it's just going to take longer to get where you want to go," she said. "And it doesn't mean you're giving away the store. It takes more to work with someone, rather than telling them this is how it's going to be."

Scott is the youngest of the three finalists seekingto run the 44,000-studentCleveland schools and take on the academic and budget challenges of an urban district. She also comes with the most varied background, though she has the least experience of the three in managing a large urban district.

Born in Canada, she was mostly educated there and gained her early experience as a teacher and principal in the Halifax school district in Nova Scotia. That district has 51,000 students, making it larger than Cleveland's. Scott noted that working as a principal in two schools there gave her experience in a large district, though she did not work in the central office.

She later was a principal in Cambridge, Mass., before moving into the administration of three other districts in that state. That included four years as superintendent of the Norfolk, Mass., schools before becoming superintendent in Lowell in 2008.

Along the way, she earned her Ph.D. in education from the University of South Australia. Though she says she visited her adviser there once, most of that work was done online and by correspondence and was completed in 2005 while she was in Massachusetts.

She is engaged to be married the end of July to Michael Houston, a deputy director of electrical engineering for the integrated defense systems division of Raytheon. Scott said that if she gets the Cleveland job,Houston will remain in Massachusetts and the couple will travel to see each other on weekends. She said his work takes himabroad frequently and they are used to the separation.

"He will commute to see me in Cleveland and he's really rooting for me," she said. "He's done as much homework on Cleveland as I have."

That homework included researching Cleveland restaurants before an earlier interview Scott had here: They picked Lola.

"We loved it," she said.

That outing gave her the chance to put one of her management priorities -- making data and evidence-driven decisions -- to use by asking waitresses, Clevelanders on tour buses and a police officer on the street about the city.

"I found people very open and that they wanted to believe in the Cleveland school system and have hope," she said.

Scott's plan for restoring that hope starts with her relationship with teachers. It will also include learning from successfulcharter schools -- publicly funded, but privately operated --and adopting any practices that can work in district schools.

Paul Georges, president of the United Teachers of Lowell, said Scott had him join her when she met staff as she started in Lowell and immediately started seeking input from teachers, moving away from the top-down approach of the previous superintendent.

She also worked with the national teachers unionfor district staff to receive traininginbetter collaboration between teachers and administrators. Georges said having an administration that respected teachers and affirm their work gave teachers the ability to adjust to work better with their students and solve problems with small local teams, rather than always following orders from above.

"You didn't see that sort of thing before," he said.

Scott said districts pay teachers to educate students, so letting - and expecting them - to take responsibility and initiative only makes sense.

"Gone is the day of [teachers] sitting back and saying, 'Tell me what to do,' " Scott said. "People get orders, give it a shot, say 'This, too, shall pass,' then say, 'I told you so,' when it fails. You need to create a culture of trust, encouraging adults to be lifelong learners and risk-takers so they can improve achievement in the classroom."

Scott says the results are proving that her approach works.

Massachusetts tests do not use the same evaluation system as Ohio, so direct comparisons are impossible. Massachusetts' tests show small increases in Lowell's districtwide Composite Proficiency Index each of theyears of Scott's tenure. The district started - and remains - in the "Needs Improvement" category.

Massachusetts also calculates a Student Growth Percentile, which shows how much students gain in a year compared to others in the state. Scott pointed to that as the best measure of the performance of an urban district.

Lowell's SGP results for the last three years have been mixed, with the district outperforming others in math, but often lagging in English skills. She said the English results have prompted ongoing adjustments.

"Overall, because of the large number of Limited English Proficient students in the system, we find it easier to move the mathematics scores," Scott said.

Collaboration with the teachers union in Clevelandcould grow more difficult if Republican-led changes in teacher pay survive the budgeting process and a potential referendum on the controversial Senate Bill 5, which becamethe state's new collective-bargaining law governing public employees in Ohio. Those changes include teacher pay moving away from automatic raises based on education level and experience to a merit raise system.

Scott negotiated a results-based pay system for teachers in one Lowellschool participating in the federal Race to the Top program, but nothing on a large scale and it is too soon to measure results.

"Performance pay raises complex issues," she said. "The powers - the administration, the unions -- need to come to the table to talk about how that's going to be resolved. It's not straightforward. We'll work with the laws and we'll make them work for kids."

Scott also plans to work with charter schools and particularly watch the successes within the charter schools the Cleveland district sponsors. She hopes there is a way for the district and charter schools to collaborate more and share approaches that work.

"A really unique opportunity exists for management, the unions and charter schools to get together," she said, saying she is not sure a good model of cooperation exists yet. "How do we take what's working well there and make it work for our students and our staff? It just doesn't serve anybody to stick their head in the sand and say, 'I'm not going to deal with charter schools because I'm the public schools.' "

Though Scott has consistently had strong reviews from her school board, their relationship soured this winter over her pay while they were negotiating a contract extension. After declining raises she was entitled to in her original contract, she asked for more money in years two and three of the next contract. But the board was divided on its counteroffer. When the board could not agree on one, she announced she would leave at the end of the year and began seeking other jobs.

Lowell School Committee members were reluctant to talk about her, either saying they were busy or not returning phone messages. One referred any questions to the district's human resources department.

Mayor James Milinazo, who is president of the school committee, did not return a call seeking comment.

The neighboring Billerica school district offered her the position of interim superintendent for next year, but she turned it down. She is also a finalist for the Malden, Mass., superintendancy

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